Sunday, April 29, 2012

Operation Eyewash

Angela Merkel took another step toward modifying Germany's intransigent image on the Eurozone budget pact. Growth, she now says, will be part of the agenda at the upcoming European summit, set for late June. The European Investment Bank will figure in this agenda, just as François Hollande said it should. So she has now pre-empted Hollande's not very challenging proposals for a modification of the Merkozy pact. Tant mieux. Maybe Hollande will now be emboldened to ask for a little more, taking advantage of Merkel's pre-emptive surrender. Or perhaps Germany simply recognized that Hollande was asking for so little, and now seems so likely to win, that it made no sense whatsoever to oppose him.

It hardly matters. Events will soon force both leaders to reevaluate their positions. Timidity will not resolve this crisis.

2 comments:

I hope you're right, but I was rather depressed by reading an article in Der Spiegel this morning that suggested that austerity did work, and any other path was doomed to failure. If that represents what the Serious German People think, this crisis might last a lot longer than it should.

The Spiegel article also had a bizarre reference to the "American currency union" that has been in existence for more than 200 years. It wasn't just a throwaway line, either. If it was meant seriously, it shows a shocking ignorance of the American federal system, as well as the relative sizes of state and federal budgets in the US. I've had trouble explaining to my French friends some of the peculiarities of the US federal system (yes, we really do have elected governors--not préfets--and yes, there really are 50 different codes de la route in the US), but if Der Spiegel calls the dollar a Währungsunion without tongue firmly in cheek, then something is very wrong.

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I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer".